HuGo’s plan truly revealed its true nature in 2025–2026

In July 2023, a few weeks after the draft (which remains controversial to this day) of David Reinbacher, I broke the news with this headline: “Patience: the Habs' latest plan will reveal its true colors in 2025–2026.” As it turns out, I was spot on—that's exactly what happened!

HuGo's plan has been followed to the letter in a rare display of administrative discipline. No improvisation on the menu since the executives took over in 2021–2022.

Well, not everything unfolded exactly, exactly as planned, following all the same little paths I envisioned back then, but let's just say that the “highway” laid out by HuGo's plan was hard to miss.

1. The Habs have indeed become “one of the good teams in the NHL,” finishing 6th in the overall standings this season.

2. All in all, the Habs boast a “productive and cost-effective offense.” They would have finished in the top 5 in power play efficiency had they not slipped to 10th place in that category at the very end of the season.

Still, Montreal had the 7th-best offense in the league with 279 goals scored, just 19 goals behind first-place Colorado.

All of this with no forward earning more than $8 million…

3. Still on the offensive side, we had written:

Suzuki and Caufield have yet to have the 80-point and 45-50-goal seasons we believe they are capable of. […]

It won't be until 2025–2026 that all members of the current young offensive core will have reached a high level of maturity in key roles.

Well, Suzuki and Caufield have “blasted past” both targets we had identified. Caufield has indeed been “at the top of his game” this season! And Suzuki has risen to a level we barely dared to imagine…

Slafkovsky, as expected, in his fourth season, has also (already) become the player we dreamed of, and there may still be another level for him to reach…

Had it not been for a nasty ankle injury, Newhook would have flirted with 25 goals and 50 points… Exactly what the team was hoping for when we acquired him.

Unfortunately for Dach, for whom we had high expectations (yes, I was among those who believed he could supplant Suzuki), the injuries continued to pile up at a ridiculous rate.

4. On defense, while Hutson became the star we'd hoped for, Guhle continued to worry us with his repeated injuries. Management ultimately didn't choose between him and Matheson as we'd anticipated. Instead, they chose to extend both of their contracts! It seems the team always viewed the two players' value in use as greater than their trade value!

5. For his part, Reinbacher has seen his development significantly delayed, having missed more than the equivalent of a full season since being selected fifth overall in 2023.

With solid play overall in Laval—91 games played “down there” (including the playoffs) and only two games in the NHL—no verdict can yet be reached on him.

Will he have a role in the playoffs in Dobson's absence?

That's a tall order…

Demidov, the unexpected ingredient!

We concluded our article by saying that, regardless of ever-changing trends, the most proven recipe for winning the Stanley Cup is to put a well-balanced team on the ice, with a good mix of defense and offense.

With an offense that was already showing great promise, the acquisition of Noah Dobson was certainly a major move to improve the defense in the summer of 2025.

If the Habs were to lose their series to the Lightning, Dobson's injury (damn blocked shots!!!) would likely top the list of reasons cited…

But while Adam Engstrom's name was tentatively floated as a potential “wild card,” it was actually Ivan Demidov who, in the 2024 draft, became that “ace of spades hidden up HuGo's sleeve.”

That was something we could only vaguely dream of in July 2023 after the club turned its nose up at the controversial Matvei Michkov…

Without an “elite” player on offense, we were expecting a more “balanced” team in the vein of the 2011 Bruins or the 2019 Blues.

But the development of “elite” players like Demidov and Hutson, combined with the not-much-lower “ceilings” of the Caufields, Suzuki, and Slafkovsky, gives the Habs a “dream line” that provides a model unprecedented in recent history.

By adding “star” players and other “impact” players to this quintet—such as those already on the roster (Dobson, Matheson, Dobes, and Fowler), as well as others to come like Hage and Zharovsky—we get a structure similar to, but potentially superior to, the Blackhawks of the early 2010s.